Secret Soldiers is one of the largest and most wideranging bestiaries ever produced by Otherverse Games, dwarfing Closed: Monsters of the Armies of God, The Complete Nemesis Bestiary and comparing favorably to both volumes of the Black Bestiary even if you added them together. Included are more than 160 monsters. While the entire casts of Psi-Threats Volume I and II are included, those 40-odd monsters, mecha and supersoldiers represent only a tiny portion of the collected cast, most of which are all new.

President Michael Spencer (the even worse-than-real, anti-Mutant, cybernetically powered parody of Mike Pence) becomes the centerpiece of a web of superhuman opponents, monstrous psions, military-trained undead, and secret, bio-mechanical cults that threaten the world.

A handful of themes dominate Secret Soldiers. In addition to the politics of Psi-Watch’s 1993, several hidden cults and secretive organizations threaten the world. Elements of the Lovecraft Mythos are thrown into the pot with comic book in-jokes and homages, and an absolutely original version of Lovecraft’s Nyarlahotep has emerged as one of this dangerous, war-torn setting’s greatest threats. Mutant culture is caught between cyber-tech bigots, gigantic Watchtower Mecha and the slave-trading Republic of Cebrary at one extreme, and the other-dimensional sadism of Eugenicist Demons at the other. The psion-led, eugenic cult of the Huxley Emergence fights a secret war for control over the planet, and keeps a frightful psychic WMD called the Murder Mind in deep stasis, ready to be unleashed if Emergence’s rivals for the planet ever gain the upper hand.

It’s not all politics though. Secret Soldiers is a love letter to the kind of comics I grew up reading. Heroes might storm secret military bases, killing their way through troops in an orgy of hyper-colorful violence, only to confront a Necrofficer staging a military coup. Or they might trade blows with a high-flying, nuclear powered Luminate or be stalked by Lady Entropia’s trio of terrifying minions.

Some new elements introduced in Secret Soldiers will be expanded on in future world books. A loose coalition of First Nations tribes, protected by skillful meta-human defenders controls vast swaths of formerly American territory and form one of the most effective resistances to the Spencer Administration. An alternate reality where the Roman Empire never fell treats Psi-Watch’s Earth as a ready source of slaves and entertainment, sending sadistic Box Office Editors to recapture runaway slaves and exceptionally lucky freedom fighters who escaped to Psi-Watch’s Earth. Anthropomorphic adventurers (and the founders of a new, rough alt-rock style called Growl) hail from the free city of Cat’s Cradle, which was called Omaha, NE back in the days before all its citizens grew fur. The Lagniappe Thieves Guild in New Orleans is a relic of the Underground Railroad that has evolved into a dashing, romantic band of thieves, spies and assassins.